h the
Commissioner of Police) an order dismissing the constables and the
Inspector was passed and signed by the Commissioner in the dim light
shed by that isolated lamp; and within one second of the order the
entire compound of Government House was lighted up again, as if some one
had switched on a thousand electric lamps controlled by a single button.

Everybody who was present there enjoyed the whole thing excessively,
with the exception of the police officers who had been dismissed from
service.

It appeared that the Commissioner of Police knew a lot about Hasan Khan
and his black art. How he had come to know of Hasan Khan's powers will
now be related.

* * * * *

Most of my readers have heard the name of Messrs. Hamilton and Co.,
Jewellers of Calcutta. They are the oldest and most respectable firm of
Jewellers probably in the whole of India.

One day Hasan Khan walked into their shop and asked to see some rings.

He was shown a number of rings but he particularly approved a cheap ring
set with a single ruby. The price demanded for this ring was too much
for poor honest Hasan Khan's purse, so he proposed that the Jewellers
should let him have the ring on loan for a month.

This, of course, the Jewellers refused to do and in a most
un-Englishman-like and unbusiness-like manner a young shop assistant
asked him to clear out.

He promptly walked out of the shop promising to come again the next day.
Before going out of the shop, however, he told one of the managers that
the young shop assistant had been very rude to him and would not let him
have the ring for a month.

The next day there was a slight commotion in Hamilton's shop. The ring
was missing. Of course, nobody could suspect Hasan Khan because the ring
had been seen by everybody in the shop after his departure. The police
were communicated with and were soon on the spot. They were examining
the room and the locks and recording statements when Hasan Khan walked
in with the missing ring on his finger.

He was at once arrested, charged with theft and taken to the police
station and locked up.

At about midday he was produced before the Magistrate. When he appeared
in court he was found wearing ten rings, one on each finger. He was
remanded and taken back to his cell in the jail.

The next morning when the door of his cell was opened it was found that
one of the big _almirahs_ in which some gold and silver articles were
k